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Liposuction Recovery Tips

Summary: Your liposuction recovery period is an exceptionally important time when it comes to ensuring your overall results. These liposuction recovery tips can help you get through this period. The idea is that the faster you recover from liposuction, the sooner you’ll be able to really enjoy the results of this procedure.

Better Recovery with Liposuction Recovery Tips?

These liposuction recovery tips, in theory, can help you recover from liposuction faster than you might otherwise. But it’s important to point out a few things. While liposuction is minimally invasive, it is still a surgical procedure that requires a recuperation period. It’s important that you honor and obey the instructions you get from your plastic surgeon.

But there are definitely some things you can do on your own to improve the situation and help yourself recover from liposuction as quickly as possible. For the most part, your surgeon isn’t worried about timelines so much as your body hitting certain healing benchmarks. Those are going to be the most important things.

There’s also something to be said for finding ways to feel good during your recovery process. The simple act of finding a way to enjoy yourself for a couple of hours can help recovery feel like it’s going a bit more quickly. And that can be a huge help.

Understanding Liposuction Recovery

The first step in this process is understanding what actually happens during liposuction recovery. That’s because liposuction is generally considered to be a minimally invasive procedure. And technically it is. The incisions created are often only a couple of centimeters long. However, a cannula (a small, hollow tube used for suction) is then run back and forth along the targeted area.

Removal of the fat via this method is what gets results from your liposuction procedure, but it’s also what causes you to require a recovery period. In some ways, this process is damaging to your body, so you need to give your body time to heal. This process can also cause:

Swelling: A large part of liposuction recovery is dedicated to controlling swelling

Bruising: As with any surgical procedure, it’s not uncommon for patients to develop bruising once the procedure is performed

Other complications: You’ll want to discuss what other complications could occur after a liposuction procedure with your plastic surgeon. Most other complications are relatively rare, but the more information a patient has, the better.

Your surgeon will likely give you recovery instructions that are at least somewhat unique to you and your situation (and your given procedure). Everyone is different, and everybody heals at a different rate, but most people are back to normal activities a couple of weeks after liposuction procedures. Let’s look at a few ways to make that recovery time as efficient as possible.

Tip #1: Always Wear Your Compression Garment as Directed

After your liposuction procedure, surgeons will likely give you something called a Compression garment. This does just what it sounds like: it compresses. For example, if you get liposuction of the abdomen, you’ll get a compression garment that goes around your tummy. And it will be tight.

Types and Reasons for Compression Garments

Compression garments are usually divided into two types:

The just after surgery types will be a little more relaxed, with zippers that can help you make even more room. This is to help make room for swelling after surgery.

The two weeks after surgery type is going to be a little tighter. It’s going to help keep swelling under control, but your body should be healed enough to withstand a little more compression. You will likely have to wear this bandage for somewhere around six weeks.

It’s crucial for your recovery—both for health purposes and for purposes of protecting your overall results—that you wear your compression garment for the entire duration instructed. It might be uncomfortable from time to time—but following the instructions of your surgeon will help you protect the results from your surgery.

Tip #2: Know When to Move

After any given surgery, your body has two imperatives: heal and move. It’s a tough thing to balance sometimes. But it’s important to find the right give and take. You don’t want to move so much that you injure yourself. But you don’t want to be so sedentary that you set back your healing process.

In most cases, your surgeon will tell you how much to move and when. In order to make your liposuction recovery as successful as possible it’s important that you follow these instructions. In other words, if your surgeon says you should be walking back and forth to the kitchen, then you should probably walk back and forth to the kitchen a few times throughout the day (even if you aren’t particularly hungry).

Even small amounts of movements and stretching can be good for your recovery, helping your body to promote the healing process and at bay the possibility of atrophied muscles. But you don’t want to push yourself too hard (for example, avoid going dancing on the first night after your surgery—no matter how good the pain medication makes you feel). Follow your surgeon’s instructions.

Tip #3: Massage Can Help

This one is going to depend greatly on how far along you are in your recovery and the extent of work you’ve had performed. However, some surgeons will recommend massage as a way to recover faster from liposuction. The idea is that certain types of massage promote blood flow to the healing part of the body.

The more blood, the better circulation, the faster an area heals. But you need to be careful, because increasing blood flow can also increase bruising (that’s why you’re supposed to use ice to prevent bruising). In any case, massage can also be somewhat challenging for your skin—there’s a lot of moving around involved in a massage.

If you’re looking for ways to heal more quickly after a liposuction procedure, massage could certainly help. However, it’s important to discuss your massage plans with your surgeon first so you don’t end up creating more complications by either jumping in too early or being too aggressive with your massage.

Finding a masseur or masseuse who specializes in post-operative massage could also help improve results as well.

You Will Heal at Your Own Pace

To a certain extent, your body is in the driver’s seat when it comes to recovering from your liposuction. If you want to recover from liposuction faster, these tips might be able to help you. But you’ll notice that all of these tips, no matter how effective they might be, require that you first speak with your plastic surgeon. Whether that’s a plastic surgeon in Newport Beach or in Anchorage, it’s important that communication lines be open.

Keep in mind that recovery from any plastic surgery procedure is going to require some patience. But that patience is worth it—because most recovery regimens are designed to protect your results, to try to ensure that your investment in liposuction is worth it.

The best tips for liposuction recovery, then, will come from your body and from your surgeon. But if you need something to get you started, hopefully these liposuction recovery tips will help get you going.

6 responses to “Liposuction Recovery Tips”

My sister just had this procedure done on her after she gave birth to her first baby. I wanted to help with her recovery so I’m looking for ideas so she could spend more time with her newborn. Do you think daily walks around the neighborhood would be a good exercise for her? I’d be sure to check out video instruction on how to do a post-surgery massage. Thanks!

Daily walks might be a good option for your sister, but much will depend on where she is in her recovery and what her surgeon has to say about it. In almost all cases, your surgeon will give you appropriate benchmarks for your recovery process. So, if your sister’s surgeon says it’s okay, then walks around the neighborhood will definitely be a nice way to spend some time!

My wife has been thinking about getting liposuction, and I think that being able to know some more about it would be good. I’m glad you shared some recovery tips, including wearing your compression garment. I think that being able to get some quality compression garments would be good, and helpful for me to be able to help her recover! Thanks!

It was nice that you mentioned the use of compression garments two weeks after the surgery to keep the swelling under control. I am sure my sister would appreciate hearing this as I am sure that she will have returned to work by this time. She would not want to expose her swollen body to her co-workers, so a compression garment might just be what she needs. Thanks!

I am glad to know that the surgeon will decide when the person should move and that in order to make the liposuction surgery to be a success, the person needs to follow those instructions closely. In my sister’s case, though, I think it is best if I am around to watch over her. After all, that girl is a bit hardheaded and will start to move if she thinks she’s okay.